Wage Inequality

[www.latimes.com]

"While the New Deal Wagner Act had protected the rights of unions, Taft-Hartley gave new rights to businesses. As an omnibus bill, the Taft-Harley Act contained a number of laws and had numerous benefits for employers. It banned the closed shop, in which only union members could be hired. It allowed states to pass 'right to work' laws that instituted open shops, where workers did not have to join a union if they chose not to. [www.shmoop.com] Taft-Hartley did play a role in the long decline of unions. Almost all the southern states passed right-to-work laws, hamstringing union organizing and providing a haven for businesses fleeing unionization. When Taft-Hartley was passed, labor leaders vowed to force its repeal." [www.shmoop.com]

[www.dailykos.com]

[www.demos.org]

"For workers employed in the public sector:The difference in salary amounts to roughly $165 more a week--approximately $650 more a month--for union vs. non-union. For workers employed in the private sector, the salary difference for union vs. non-union amounts to roughly $155 more a week--approximately $615 more a month. Union workers in many healthcare fields also earn higher salaries than their non-union counterparts: Registered Nurses (16% higher), Nursing Aides (22% higher), Diagnostic Technicians (31% higher), other healthcare support occupations (33% higher)" [www.seiu.org]

"The middle class is markedly stronger when workers join together in unions. As the chart below demonstrates, the sharp decline over the past 40 years in the percentage of workers organized in unions has been associated with an equally sharp drop in the share of the nation’s income going to the middle class — those in the second, third and forth income quintiles. " [www.thinkprogress.org] "When unions were stronger in the middle part of the last century, American workers wages rose as they became increasingly more productive. But today, as union strength has decreased, this link has broken down: even though American workers grow increasingly more productive, their wages have stagnated. At the same time, more and more income has become concentrated at the very top of the income scale." [www.thinkprogress.org]

﻿“The mechanism by which working class people could earn a middle class wage, and the decline of unions actually parallels a long term decline in incomes of American people. We are a poorer country than we used to be before, and we are poorer largely because the unions have been effectively curtailed from being effective. Taft-Hartley was essentially a way of making it much harder for unions to achieve recognition and to bargain. That was the purpose of it and it served its purpose extremely well. So you can basically say this, the decline of the American middle class parallels the decline of unionization rates in this country.”﻿-Lobbyist Barry Broad on the effects of the Taft-Hartley Act on unionization